Robert Palmer would have turned 76 t’other day. One of Britain‘s finest pop creators hid in plain sight behind the enduring image of a suave sophisticate with a taste for the finer things in life. But behind the fine-cut tailoring lay a fiercely dedicated, eternally curious if conservative* musical lifer cut off in his prime.
A native Batley boy who spent much of his childhood in post-war Malta, Robert Palmer made judicious use of his considerable croon (a baritone that was equally adept at tenor and falsetto), eclectic musical tastes (Detroit soul, calypso, funk, reggae, bossa nova, European electronica) and debonair demeanour to establish a unique if slightly undervalued place in the pop firmament.
Detractors called him a dilettante and a lounge lizard, an artist who was too versatile for his own good. In other words, a voracious genre-hopper who, like Bowie and Ferry, was seen to favour style over substance. The Los Angeles Times sneered that Palmer “made rock n’ roll safe for guys who look like stockbrokers and made an art of passivity.”
Like the Dame and the Roxy Music mainman, Palmer had an immense sense of musical history and affected an aura of sophisticated suited sensuality. In other words, a sharp-dressed Yorkshireman who was so immaculately attired he looked as if he had just stepped out of a photo shoot for GQ.
It was that Ferré-clad image that helped Palmer — until then a cult figure with a sporadic chart history — attract a wider audience in the CD dominated post-Live Aid landscape, with the enthusiastic support of MTV crystallising in 1986 with a provocative pop promo. The Terence Donovan-directed Addicted To Love video became a classic, with its cadre clones of leggy and voluptuous, remote and imperious mannequin-like models in trademark little black dresses and providing endless eye ‘candy’.
What the public was less aware of was that Palmer was already married — to a Thatcher, no less. Though her name wasn’t Margaret but Susan. Whitney Houston was taking notes, possibly.
“He certainly liked the good things in life,” recalls his former PR Alan Edwards. “His time in the Caribbean had turned him into something of a modern-day Noël Coward. He loved good food and fine wines.” By all accounts, Palmer was a heavy drinker and smoker to the end, and had a sporadic relationship with cocaine as far back as his time living in West Hampstead in the early seventies as co-singer in blues rockers Vinegar Joe with Elkie Brooks. For whom the bell tolls.
I remember all too vividly reading about Robert Palmer’s fatal heart attack care of my parents’ super soaraway Daily Express (yes, I know) the day after it happened in a Paris hotel. It was a slightly grey afternoon on Saturday 27 September with the three of us having just flown from Amsterdam to Luton Airport.
Other than noting Robert was just 54, the age my maternal grandmother lived to, and that he died on Bryan Ferry’s birthday, I suddenly recalled how back in the day I’d even owned two of his ’80s albums — one studio set (Riptide) and one compilation (Addictions: Volume 1). All of a sudden I was instantly transported back to all those cool cuts (Every Kinda People, Looking For Clues, Some Guys Have All The Luck, Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley, the latter with its Chic-like Roxy artwork pastiche) and collaborations with everyone from Gary Numan to Talking Heads and the Power Station. No need to get into the excursions with UB40 is there?
The divisive Addicted To Love aside, there’s one other offering that’s arguably Robert Palmer’s signature song. Tina Turner may have covered both in lightning speed turnaround but it’s a more recent moody synthscape remake of his 1980 single Johnny & Mary that got the king of the covers Bryan Ferry himself waxing lyrical about RP this week. In an interview with superdeluxedition.com the Roxy legend, now in his 80th year, was also joined by his longtime producer Rhett Davies.
SDE: I love your cover of Johnny & Mary on this [Retrospective] record. It’s such a fantastic song. What attracted you to doing that cover version?
BF: Isaac, my son, is a friend of [Norwegian DJ and songwriter] Todd Terje and wanted us to do something together. And I said “how about doing this song?” And it was mainly his work, actually. I was on a bit, but he’s really good. A great talent, a pretty prodigious talent. And I love the song. I met Robert Palmer only once when I was at Compass Point [Studios, in Nassau in The Bahamas] where he was living. I remember he came running in the studio, and said “Oh, I love that” – Limbo it was. But he said, you should call it Down In Limbo. And I went “Hmm, I don’t know, I think I like Limbo better” [laughs].
BF [to Rhett]: Did you work with Robert?
RD: Yeah, I worked with Robert, I was assistant engineer on Sneaking Sally Through The Alley. That was great. Every time I was out at Compass Point, either with B-52’s or Talking Heads, I’d bump into him.
BF: He was a friend of John Porter, who is a great friend of mine, and a bit of an unsung hero kind of character. He was at college with me, and he kind of joined Roxy. He played on For Your Pleasure, and helped me produce the first solo album. So he’s a really important figure in my development. He was a great friend of Palmer and Little Feat, who they had in common. Richie Hayward, the drummer, was a great friend of John, and John didn’t really want to join Roxy as the bass player, because he wanted to be in Little Feat. That was more John’s thing. And he’s still alive. He played with me this year. I like to have continuity sometimes, but also young talent. I like to get a balance of the two.
Steve Pafford
*Conservative? Well, RP did admit, however tongue strapped to cheek, in a 1989 interview that the biggest surprise of his life was “that U2 sell records.“ Miaow…
